


The Hollow Men

by constellations (allyoop)



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1431424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyoop/pseuds/constellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard was getting really tired of T.S. Eliot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hollow Men

Leonard was getting really tired of T.S. Eliot. 

He cornered everyone within range, half-grumbling half-shouting, that he knew  _exactly_ how the world was going to end. It wasn’t a bang and it wasn’t a whimper; it was a crack in the hull and everyone’s blood boiling, it was losing power in the deep dark and wasting the last breath of oxygen still calling for help, it was landing on a godforsaken planet and feeling the stab of a hostile spear and never seeing Earth again. Leonard could rattle off a thousand and one ways to die in space without pausing to think.

But he was lying.

What he said he knew wasn’t what he  _knew._ _  
_The world didn’t end with a bang nor a whimper. It didn’t end at all. The world had been chugging and chugging along and their explorations into space only further proved how tremendously big and old the universe was. Something so immeasurable could never truly end.

And it never truly stopped.

He found this out hard when Joce left him for good. That last glimpse of crying eyes behind the screaming words and the final slam of the door left Leonard full of a black emptiness he wished was hungry enough to swallow him whole. The world should have stopped, the world should have let him breathe, but instead no one cared and no one came and nothing stopped for Leonard McCoy.

Just like that day up on the hill when he buried his daddy; the rain kept raining and the earth kept spinning and Leonard felt the dark lump he called a heart crumble a little more into dust.

Space suited him just fine, he thought, even as he repeated anew his list of possible deaths. Space was a darkness that crept up on your soul and froze you from the inside out; it was its own worst disease. And Leonard embraced it with arms wide open, letting the icy wind blow his dusty heart down to nothing.

He was nothing but bones and he knew this long before the nickname stuck. He was a place where no one goes and the sun didn’t shine, no matter how hard that bright star tried.

Jim tried, oh he tried. But a broken man can’t support a sawdust man; they were just a hobbling three-legged racer, biding their time until one of them fell for good.

But it was nice, Leonard thought, and as nice as his muddled life could get. To feel a warm hand on his shoulder that rested without motive. To hear his name said without pain. To feel a speck of a fire catch in the empty space of his chest, miniscule against the dusty dark, but still there.

Still bright.

Still burning.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just gotta scratch that writing itch no matter how short & sweet.  
> Except in this case its short & angsty.
> 
> Also title and famous quote is from "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot.


End file.
